


Big man, big heart

by levi2207



Category: RWBY
Genre: I really love massive men with massive father energy, Spoilers: Volume 8 (RWBY), character study- esque fic, listen, might become its own thing?, might stay as a one shot?, who knows - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-22
Updated: 2021-02-22
Packaged: 2021-03-19 06:14:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,486
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29621838
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/levi2207/pseuds/levi2207
Summary: Hazel Rainart is many things. Most significantly the summ of a lifetime of decisions, good or bad- he doesn't know anymore.It's time he made a decision he believes in.r
Relationships: Gretchen Rainart & Hazel Rainart, Hazel Rainart & Emerald Sustrai, Mercury Black & Hazel Rainart
Comments: 1
Kudos: 16





	Big man, big heart

**Author's Note:**

> did a quick little drabble for everyone's favourite man-mountain based on the latest episode, hope you all like this fic I wrote in like half an hour.

Semblances… fickle things, they are. To one person, it is the single greatest boon they will ever encounter throughout their lives. To another, it is ruin and misery.

Some argue that a semblance is a manifestation of a person’s soul. In turn affecting said person. Others argue that it’s the other way around. Another party sees no connection at all. 

If Hazel were a man of eloquence. “An enigma wrapped inside a mystery” would have been an apt way to put forth his thoughts on semblances.

Hazel is  _ not _ an eloquent man. He is not a man of many words at all. So, in the rare occasions someone sticks around long enough to ask about his semblance. He’ll usually indulge them with a singular word.

“Handy.”

And a Handy semblance it was. The ability to completely ignore pain, sure- it’s not as fancy as glass manipulation, or poison, or… whatever Watts has. (He’s not felt himself caring enough to ask.) But it’s been a power he’s been able to rely on for most of his life.

He remembers first unlocking it as well.

Gretchen and He had their aura unlocked at an early age. Their parents weren’t well off, and the two had been eager to help. They had agreed, but had reasoned an aura was an extra layer of protection when they were off gathering firewood or edible berries in the Grim infested forests surrounding the little cabin they’d been born in.

He remembers those times through the bittersweet tint of nostalgia. A simpler time, sitting by the fire whilst their mother sang. Or helping their father around whenever he was home. The man might have never been the most affectionate sort, but his rare hugs had been great.

And then, something had changed.

Hazel never found out the full story. But  _ something _ had changed a little after their ninth birthday, their father had gotten into an accident at a local factory- losing a leg and rendering him unfit for work.

Everything had changed from there. Money was tighter and tighter, and their parents had grown colder and colder. Until an argument over a broken jar of molasses had ended up with Gretchen on the floor. Sporting a red handprint across her cheek.

Hazel soon sported an identical one after lunging at their father.

two years had passed. And the rare hugs their father had given them had been a thing of the past, replaced by words like daggers and bruising blows.

Hazel can’t recall what the original argument had been about even. All he’d noticed was a glass hurtling towards him, and Gretchen moving to intercept like only she would.

He ended up shoving her aside. Closing his eyes as it careened into his temple and shattered into razor-sharp shards that buried themselves into his head and drew blood in a dozen places.

And he felt nothing.

It had taken a few months, but eventually he’d narrowed down what exactly his semblance was. 

And the rest was history.

They ran away a year later. Two backpacks full of tinned foods, a map, and a dream of becoming a huntress.

That’s all the two Rainart children packed as they snuck out into the woods one chilly autumn night. Never to return.

They had drifted around from place to place. Before settling in a small orphanage in Vale. Gretchen’s choice- reasoning that it was closest to “the most prestigious” huntsman academy in the whole of remnant. Hazel had just nodded and followed her. He might have shared no interest in her dream, but where she led, he had followed.

Until he couldn’t follow her anymore…

He’d thought about it, on more than one occasion. Considered it, had come close at least a dozen times. But he’d never been able to pull through. She would have wanted him to keep living, and he had.

Or well… “living” he supposed, was a strong word for it.

The moment the news had reached him, he had bolted from the orphanage- two months away from his eighteenth birthday and with hatred smoldering in his heart. That day had been the first time he’d hated his semblance.

It hadn’t numbed anything, as he was forced to come to terms with the fact his twin was gone…

From there, he’d drifted. Doing the odd job here and there, helping build sheds one summer. Looking after a farm the next. 

Hazel remembers the first time he realized just how broken he was.

He’d been working as a bouncer in a small village. It wasn’t the most well paying job, but it sufficed. Besides, it usually meant getting paid to sit around and do nothing. Even the drunkest of patrons usually pause for a moment when confronted with someone who sounds like he’s choking on a gravel pit and who is tall enough that ceiling fans pose a genuine threat to his wellbeing.

One drunken idiot apparently hadn’t gotten the memo. And had it been any other day Hazel would have just chucked him out on the street. But it had been a week filled with nightmares and regret, and the punch that buffoon threw his way was all the excuse he’d needed to find an outlet.

That was the night Hazel had first killed a man, and even with his semblance deactivated. He had felt nothing.

From there, killing had become as natural as breathing to him. Until Salem had found him.

Again, history.

Hazel’s in his late forties now, his semblance used to dull the crick in his back and the dull throbbing of the myriad of scars littering his body about as often as it is in any sort of fight.    
  
It’s constantly running these days. A faint numbness that anchors him from his fury and rage and keeps his eyes set on the road ahead of him. And then something had entered his periphery. 

Kids.

They were killers, thieves, and probably a myriad of other things. But the moment he’d seen them, that hadn’t mattered anymore.

All Hazel had seen in that moment, when they’d met in the halls of Salem’s castle- were two scared children.

The parallels were blatant, from where he was standing. 

Unlike Watts, he hadn’t originally dismissed them. And unlike Tyrian, he wasn’t interested in tormenting and/or stabbing them, he had tried to keep neutral, treat them with the bare minimum of respect he expected from others and wait for them to disappear.

Only they hadn’t, and despite what he had been telling himself. Hazel was  _ far _ from neutral towards them by the point they were running away from Haven.

Mercury was nothing more than a beaten dog lashing out at the world around him. And Hazel understood his pain, and his feelings. Probably more than he would care to admit. Broken in the same way- beyond repair. And it pained him, but he knew he could do nothing for the boy.

Emerald on the other hand?

The girl was near fanatical in her devotion towards Cinder. Who probably saw the street rat as nothing more than a soldier at best.

He also remembers the first time they’d truly spoken. When Cinder’s survival hadn’t been confirmed and he had found himself in the unenviable position of having to try and help the kid as she had a panic attack. She’d spilled her guts to him then, regarding, well… everything.

Hazel wasn’t good with words, but he seemed to possess an aura that made people content to spill their true feelings in his presence. He did not care, he preferred listening anyways.

But something had resonated with him, in the way she had talked. Not for any form of familiarity, or a kindred bond of suffrage the two supposedly shared.

No, he saw something- something that he’d never thought to find.

Something that could be  _ saved. _

A part of him wants to do what Gretchen would have done. To sling the mint-haired girl over his shoulder and leg it. Hide out in some tiny town in the middle of nowhere. Where people don’t ask questions and the authorities can be bought, and he can at least try and help her be better.

But Hazel knows that’s not possible, knows he’s too broken to even try that. He knows he’ll find a way to put his heel on the smidge of goodness left in the kid and grind it into dust.

So, as he stands there- Salem reeling from a blow that shattered two cervicals and would have left anyone but her a twitching corpse on the ground. Hazel decides to do the one thing he can.

And when she looks at him, tears beginning to shimmer in those red eyes, he finds his resolve galvanized.

“Go.” Is all he says. Fully expecting them to be the last words she ever hears him speak.

He’s never been one for words. Might as well make that one count.


End file.
